"Happy Family"

I was awake long before I opened my eyes. I lay on my back, my head resting on a plush pillow and facing a window, the sunlight red against my eyelids. There was some warmth from the burning orb on my dark face. There should have been an overwhelming sensation of pain, but I felt nothing. My movements were restricted. 

I listened intently to my surroundings. The beeping of medical machinery was audible. There were hushed voices outside of my room. Finally, realizing there was nothing to fear, I opened my eyes.

A mistake.

Seated in front of me, her hands balled into fists against her chest, was…her.

“Elijah,” she whispered. Tears welled up into her eyes; a few rolled down her dark cheeks. I had seen her last a month ago, and her thick hair was messier than it had been then. Her clothes were the same, wrinkled and overly simple. My eyes looked at the shell of the woman who I used to call my mother.

“Why are you here?” I asked. My voice was raspy, but it was also cold. I don’t want her here, I don’t want her anywhere near me. “Where are my friends?”

“You-you were hit by a truck and brought here,” she explained. “I-I’m still your legal…parent or guardian, so they would only let me in.” She stuttered. My “mother” never used to stutter; she had always been confident in her words.

Her hands went down to her lap. “Elijah, I—”

“Get out,” I interrupted. My body felt stiff and weak, but I fought through it to sit up in the hospital bed. “Don’t touch me!” I exclaimed when she tried to help me. She broke a little more before me; I wrestled with myself to feel nothing.

My left arm and leg were in casts from when the truck had run me over. Bandages were also across my body. Nonetheless, I managed to sit up in the bed. Realizing she was still in the room when I finished, I slowly repeated, “Get out. Call a nurse and tell them to get my friends. They’re all I have.”

The woman stood up. “Elijah, I’m your mother!” she yelled. Her hand went to her chest, emphasizing every word. “I-I-I’m still here, I’m not gone. You can’t shut me out after everything. I cared for you all these years! I loved you like my own child, Elijah! Elijah, please!”

I looked down to resist looking at her pained face. My body temperature rose and my eyes filled with angry tears. I shook in my bed. “You,” I hissed through clenched teeth, “you fucking bitch!” My head came up sharply to look at her. I could only process her expression at that moment when her face fell and her lips separated. “You ruined my life!” I roared. “You took everything from me before I even knew how to crawl. You kidnapped me; you killed my birth parents. You and your husband lied to me for seventeen years about who I was. Then, you killed him, the man who I had thought was my father, who I loved! After all you’ve done to me, you’re still coming back to me like I’m yours. Leave me alone. I hate you!” My throat and face burned. Everything inside hurt. 

We both took in shaky breaths. Whatever painkiller was being injected into me through the IV was growing weaker. My head throbbed and my limbs ached. Painful of them all was my heart, whose broken pieces were being ground into dust. 

A quivering smile grew on her face. “You-you don’t that mean that,” she told me. “Y-you’re mad, Elijah, I know, I know, I get that. B-but you can’t hate me, you don’t mean that. I love you, and you love me because I love you, Elijah, right?”

My breathing increased. She’s crazy, I thought, unable to respond. How could I forget she’s crazy? Look at all she’s done to have me. Why would she just stop now? 

“I know you’re mad,” she continued, “but we can fix this.” Tears were still streaming from her dark brown eyes, but she forced a smile onto her face. “We can fix this, Elijah. We-we can somewhere else—live somewhere, anywhere you want. If-if you want a dad, I-I can make that happen, Elijah. Elijah, I’ll do anything for you, because I love you, but I need you, I need you, Elijah.” 

“Stop,” I finally said. I pushed myself into the back of the bed, trying to get away from her. She took four steps closer to my bed. “Stay back,” I warned, but the brass was gone from my voice. I was weak and the pain was growing. Yelling had taken all the little strength I had had. And, now, this woman I had once loved was taking everything else I had.

“No, no, no,” she cooed, “you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to go. I’ll never leave you because you’re my son, Elijah. I’m your mother and you’re my son. We’re going to stay together and figure everything out. I-I did everything I did out of love for you, and I-I know it’s going to take a while for you to understand, but you will, you will, Elijah.”

She loomed over me in my bed. The smile and the tears, the sadness and the happiness, the wishfulness and the despondency…they all terrified me. I felt tiny in front of her, insignificant and helpless. A month ago, I was strong and confident when I had pushed her away, yelled at her to leave me alone forever. But now, in this hospital room, there was no trace of that confidence. My gaze shifted down once again.

I looked down at my hands as they gripped the blanket covering the lower half of my injured body. There were dry marks, and they were stark against my skin. “You said you would do anything for me?” I asked with my head still down.

“Yes, Elijah, anything!” she exclaimed. “I’ll—”

“Stay the fuck away from me,” I said rapidly in a level voice. My hands strangled the blanket. “I never want to see you again.”

A deranged laugh escaped her throat. “I can’t do that, Elijah,” she said. I could hear the smile in her voice. “I-I have to be with you. I love you, and I have to stay with you. I’m your mother—”

“You’re not my mother!” I bellowed. My vision doubled for a moment. When it came back into focus, I continued, “Why can’t you get that? Why can’t you understand that I don’t want you in my life anymore? You took everything away from me. You hurt me in ways that I can’t even comprehend. Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me? Do you know what it’s like to try to talk to people and tell them you don’t have a last name, that you had a mother and father but they were both murdered by a psycho who took you from them? Why don’t you get it? Just leave me alone!”

“Elijah…” She trailed off as her voice broke. Waterfalls cascaded down her face. Each sob shook her body. 

Before either of us could start up again, there was a knock on the door. “Excuse me, is everything all right?” a voice called from the other side of the door. 

I opened my mouth, but the woman at my bedside lunged and covered my mouth with her filthy hands. My struggles were futile in my damaged body, and she easily overpowered me. My screams of dissent were muffled.

“Shh, shh, shhh,” the woman whispered. She pinned down my working limbs with her body, practically in the bed with me. In a quiet voice while shaking her head, she told me, “Y-you don’t want to do that, Elijah. Elijah, you need to understand that—ow!”

I bit her hand. She brought it back instinctively. By the time she realized, it was too late. “Help! Help me! Help!” I screamed with all my energy. Her hands returned to my face and she kept them there even as I bit them. My vision darkened around the edges and the colors in the room faded.

“No, no, no, no, Elijah,” the woman whispered. “I love you, and you love me, Elijah. We’re-we’re a happy family, Elijah.”

The door to the hospital room opened suddenly. “What is going on here?” a voice called. “Hey, get off him!”

“Nothing, no, nothing, we’re talking,” the woman explained in a pleading voice. “I’m his mother, I’m his mother! He loves me and I love him!” She was ripped away from me. She yelled and kicked, hurting me along with the nurses who tried to restrain her. 

All the voices in the room rose and fell sporadically. My vision blurred. How? I asked myself. How did we come to this? I…loved you. But, how could I have loved someone who I had never truly known? 

In my last moments of consciousness, I felt three tears of sadness—not anger—crawl down my cheeks.